C.G. Jung's Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge (Synchronicity as a Principle of Acausal Connections) was published in 1952 together with a monograph by the quantum physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler (The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Formation of Kepler's Natural-Scientific Theories). Jung's study is borne by the contrast, or even opposition, between the connection of cause and effect between physical events that forms the basis for natural science, on the one hand, and "sinngemäße[n] Koinzidenzen" (meaningful coincidences; 846), on the other. These latter "synchronistische Ereignisse", Jung says, "beruhen auf der Gleichzeitigkeit zweier verschiedener psychischer Zustände. [...] Ein unerwarteter Inhalt, der sich unmittelbar oder mittelbar auf ein objektives äußeres Ereignis bezieht, koinzidiert mit dem gewöhnlichen psychischen Zustand." (Synchronistic events are based on the simultaneity of two different psychic states. [...] An unexpected content, related immediately or mediately to an objective external event, coincides with the usual psychic state. 855 emphasis in original). He notes in his examples that the present psychic state corresponding to the objective external event may refer presciently to the future. Hence, in this case, a future event presences in the mind's present focus, no matter whether this amounts to prescience or not, as synchronicity would seem to imply and demand.
Subjective psyche inside, objective physical world outside?
The above quotation already makes it clear that Jung proceeds unquestioningly from the supposed axiom of the 'obvious' split between an external, objective, physical world and an inner, subjective psyche. Because of this postulated split between the physical and the psychic, Jung is motivated to posit an "archetypische[r] Grundlage" (archetypal foundation; 846) upon which to glue a meaningful connection between two causally unrelated events. The archetypes postulated to exist in what Jung calls the "collective unconscious" provide a constructed bridge of meaning for the coincidence, being energized affectively by the "Instinkten, deren formaler Aspekt eben der Archetypus ist" (instincts, whose formal aspect is precisely the archetype; 846). "Die Archetypen sind formale Faktoren, welche unbewußte seelische Vorgänge anordnen: sie sind 'patterns of behaviour'." (The archetypes are formal factors that arrange unconscious psychic processes: they are 'patterns of behaviour'. 841)
Jung's "psychoid", which he expressly employs only adjectivally, is coined first of all in another, 1946 study to come to terms with "das eigentliche Wesen des Archetypus" (the proper essence of the archetype ) which "bewußtseinsunfähig, das heißt transzendent ist, weshalb ich es als psychoid bezeichne" (is incapable of consciousness, i.e. transcendent, wherefore I designate it as psychoid; Theoretische Überlegungen zum Wesen des Psychischen para. 417). "[U]nanschaufliche[r] psychoide[r] Faktoren" (Psychoid factors) are therefore "unanschaulich" (ibid.), i.e. literally 'cannot be simply looked at', hence'unclear', 'abstract'. The "psychoid nature" of the "archetype beyond the psychic sphere," is said by Jung, "to form the bridge to matter" (Damit wäre die Stellung des Archetypus jenseits der psychischen Sphäre bestimmt, [...] und mit seiner psychoiden Natur die Brücke zum Stoff überhaupt; para. 420). Hence "psychoid" is a hybrid, matter-psyche concept. But 'matter' itself is a concept of the mind, and hence itself psychic. Hence the old, untenable postulation by Kant of the "an sich" beyond the phenomenal realm returns to haunt us.
I call the asserted split between the inner psyche and external physical (achieved, incidentally, by a tacit, phenomenologically insensitive spatialization of the phenomenon of time) the Cartesian Cage in which all modern thinking since Descartes is held captive. Jung is no exception. It is telling, however, that he is nevertheless compelled to formulate synchronicity as a "Gleichzeitigkeit zweier verschiedener psychischer Zustände" (simultaneity of two different psychic states; 855 emphasis in original), i.e. the ostensibly 'external' physical event first has to be transformed into an 'inner' psychic image that only then relates meaningfully to another psychic image.
Jung's conceptions of space and time are also conventional, as if there were only one kind of time, namely, linear time, along which physical connections of cause and effect between events can be laid. His conception of synchronicity is therefore also tied to the conception of linear time.
All-encompassing three-dimensional time of the psyche
Here is where the controversial encounter with my On Human Temporality begins. The book's path of thinking opens with a phenomenology of time that shows itself (i.e. is not merely postulated) to be the all-encompassing, three-dimensional temporal openness within which all that 'is' presences in and absences from the mental focus, being understood hermeneutically, i.e. interpreted, as such-and-such by the mind. The psyche belongs intimately to this three-dimensional temporality because its openness to the world is nothing other than its temporal openness. This has the implication that all that is physical, too, can only presence for the mind in the psyche, i.e. the physical and the psychic are not separated at all, but rather, the physical is encompassed by the temporal psyche. Since the openness that is three-dimensional time is all-encompassing, there is no inside, and also no outside.
Events of all kinds, including physical ones, can only presence and have any connection with each other (for us mortals) within the temporal psyche. In particular, the conception of cause and effect which Jung accepts as the axiomatic basis for all natural science is itself psychic and the psyche's mental faculty that conceives causality as such. This continues to hold true, even when strict causal determinism in physics concedes quantum indeterminacy.
Different kinds of movement, different ontologies
Efficient causality itself is an ontological conception conceived in order to come to terms with, and thus master (e.g. predict), one kind of movement, namely, physical movement. It has its own specific, historical origins with Aristotle, who presents (cf. e.g. Met. Book Theta) an elaborated ontology of physical movement, with its well-known triad of concepts, based on the paradigm of efficient-productive movement, i.e. τὲχνη ποιητική. This ontology of a single kind of movement has encroached upon and subsumed other kinds of movement, each of which calls rather for its own, explicitly worked-out ontology. By denying this call, all modern science is the profiteer of this usurpation that vainly tries to subjugate other kinds of movement to the rule of linear causality. It is driven by the absolute will to power over all kinds of movement.
Jung does not realize that, as a consequence of taking efficient causality as somehow 'objectively true', hence independent of the subject, thus overlooking its hermeneutic historicity, he is neglecting the task of an ontology of mental movement within the three-dimensional temporality of the all-encompassing psyche.
The free, temporally three-dimensional movement of the mind in shifting its focus on all that presences for and absences from the mind is, of course, not linearly causal, but rather a hip-hopping movement among the three temporal dimensions that has its own sense and meaning for the mind; it is not merely haphazard, meaningless, contingent. What Jung calls "sinngemäße[n] Koinzidenzen" (meaningful coincidences 846) between psychic events, including physopsychic events, may not require archetypal glue from a postulated collective unconscious to make sense of them.
Furthermore, the causal connection between physical events presencing in the psyche can be conceived as 'meaningful' without requiring the postulation of archetypes. The meaning is provided hermeneutically, phenomenologically by the Aristotelean ontology of efficient-productive movement, not by any archetype. This observation tones down the contrast between scientific causality and Jung's postulated synchronicity.
Jung also overlooks another important kind of
movement, the one through which human beings sociate with one another: mutually estimative interplay. This latter requires its own conceptual phenomenology to accomplish an ontology of social movement in which contingency is very much at play (cf. my Social Ontology of Whoness for more detail).
Contingency does rob mutually estimative interplay of meaning and
sense, but, on the contrary, is a constitutive feature of it per se; it does not have to
be suppressed as a phenomenon to attain a sort of effective law of
movement. Moreover, no synchronicity based on archetypes is required to make sense of sociating interplay, which is essentially playful, and hence contingent. The Western mind has been implicitly fixated for too long on the ontology of just one kind of movement, viz. physical movement, and therefore expects that other kinds of essentially different movement will also bend to the Western mind's will to power.
Further reading: On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.
Social Ontology of Whoness De Gruyter, Berlin 2018.
C.G. Jung Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge published as one part of Naturerklärung und Psyche, a study from the C.G. Jung-Institut IV 1952, reprinted in C.G. Jung Die Dynamik des Unbewußten Vol. 8 Gesammelte Werke. Cited according to the paragraph numbering in GW Vol. 8.
Wolfgang Pauli Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler published as one part of Naturerklärung und Psyche, a study from the C.G. Jung-Institut IV 1952.
C.G. Jung Theoretische Überlegungen zum Wesen des Psychischen (first published in Eranos-Jahrbuch XIV 1946 under the title Der Geist der Psychologie) in Vol. 8 Gesammelte Werke. Cited according to the paragraph numbering in GW Vol. 8.
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